The prolonged, incessantly obstinate steps continued—a young man's soles walking forward continuously, not pausing in uncertainty, nor haughtily walking in hubris; rather, being too average to an unusual extent.
The sound of his ordinary footsteps echoed in the empty space, with none—the presence of living beings—other than himself.
The steps were seemingly measured, as if he held the weight of the world. Yet from the young man radiated no aura—neither peaceful nor threatening—almost as if his presence...
Simply didn't exist.
The footsteps were continuous for the worth of a while, with no sound in the realm other than the moderate and soft ripples occurring in the water canals engraved into the grey, beautiful, yet lifeless marble floor, and the sorrowful howls of the wind.
Above, the turbines rose like skeletal spires, cutting through the mist offered to a forgotten grey sky.
Their blades turned slowly, as if mimicking the rotation of some unseen, ancient mechanism—one beyond any preposterous god—one that marked not time, but judgment.
The colossal turbines spun as if in mockery of motion itself, their rhythm neither constant nor random—defying pattern.
The fog seemed alive, expanding and contracting like the lungs of a slumbering deity.
Beneath his feet, the marble was unblemished—sterile in its perfection, unnerving in its silence. It bore no seams, no origin, as though the floor had not been built but rather revealed—uncovered from beneath reality like an old truth best left buried.
He walked forward—because to stand still was to invite attention.
The air shifted. Not cold. Not warm. Just… present.
A vibration without sound. A presence without weight. The kind of thing a Seer might glimpse before losing their tongue to uncontrollable laughter, or a Shepherd might attempt to name before their mind was flayed apart into ritualistic gibberish.
Despite walking forward, there was no feeling of arrival—only the persistent sense that forward, backward, up, and down had all become the same. Almost like the very notion of direction had been judged unworthy in this realm.
Click, click, click, click—
Halt.
The young man's footsteps came to a stop and gaze far away. His left, pitch-black eye observed the limit of his journey, his right white eye verifying its integrity.
The grey marble floor came to a certain point, as if a steep cliff. Beyond that was neither dark nor clear water that could be seen—down, clear but blurry—a paradox of thought; the distance enough to snatch the life of a man in ignorant reverence before touching the water, destroying his skull upon contact from impact.
Black and a few strands of light pink locks flew in the air as if humming in agreement with the wind's mantra, sprawling across his forehead. Yet he paid it no heed.
The turbines, almost as if an illusion, were not placed upon the land, but far, far away in the vast infinite ocean, as if they had been powered by the ocean itself.
But what grabbed his attention were the turbines not—rather, it was the far sea.
As the fog thinned in patches—never entirely parting, merely tolerating vision—something immense loomed ahead. Not a structure. Not a mountain.
Bones.
Pale, glistening under an unseen light, they arched through the landscape like the ribs of a long-dead god, fractured in places where reality itself seemed reluctant to form around them. A spine—if it could be called that—pierced upward from the ocean and disappeared into the mist above, too tall to fathom, too wrong to belong to anything mortal.
These were no fossils. They had not aged. They had not eroded.
They were preserved—worshipped, perhaps. Or feared.
Even the wind turbines bowed around them, their blades slowing as if in reverence—or submission.
Sigils shimmered faintly across the bones' surface—shifting, not etched, but alive, like thoughts bleeding from the marrow of something that had dreamed in a language never meant for human comprehension.
A whisper grazed his mind. Not words. A sensation—something between memory and madness.
The bones did not rest.
They waited.
For what?
For whom?
The man's gaze was neither indifferent, cold, logical, nor even empty—simply blankly staring at the far structure of a behemoth of a creature far, far away.
As if he had never seen it, the young man's eyes turned to a particular wooden-like object reclining upon a fragmented piece of marble. It was the first damage he had seen on the intricate marble floor—a testimony to its non-omnipotence.
Yet, instead of panicking, the young man's quiet demeanour was enough to unnerve most people in this alarming situation.
Even his thoughts were very quiet. In fact, he had no thoughts by this point.
His mind was like a stubborn rock: hard on the outside, but hollow inside.
The young man's eyes blankly stared at the wooden puppet with no features on the ground, lifeless—as if its puppeteer had cut its strings.
The wind blew his hair across his face, yet he made no move to brush it aside.
He waited for it, as usual.
And 'it' did not disappoint.
"You did not"
"Did you not"
"Not did you"
Time stopped. No—neither time nor space existed here in the first place. How could he forget this?
His glued gaze did not move even after hearing the requiem of hundreds of the same carbon-copy voice resounding in the whole realm, screeching—
"Not, did you?"
Sloppily standing up with its hands dangling loosely beside it, the wooden doll stood, looking up—without eyes—at the young man, who did not answer, just looking at it.
If anyone else had been looking at this, they would have laughed at the ridiculous view. After all, it was a sight to behold—not seen every day.
But the young man was different.
It wasn't that he acknowledged its power—it was that 'it' itself was a mystery that did not make sense, even to him.
"Not you did"
The wooden doll seemed to lose interest.
It turned its empty gaze toward the distant horizon, where the turbines and the skeleton of the behemoth resided peacefully, as if the world was merely created for them both.
Wrong.
It was merely created for the wind turbines.
The wooden doll looked back at the young man, who was looking at it without speaking a single word.
"Passed."
The moment those words came out of its mouth, the location they were in shifted to a place the young man was familiar with.
A childish, lit playroom with colorful objects appeared. At first glance, it was normal.
However, upon focusing, there was something greatly wrong. For one, outside the windows were not the familiar lovely flowers, grass, and cheerful people speaking—
[Behold an unthinkable present.]
Rather, it was the empty, cold void, colorful dots twinkling in the far, far distance. Standing at the door was a black humanoid figure with no identifiable features. The young man ignored the odd presence and walked beside it.
The humanoid creature was not humanoid at all. Upon looking at its side, one would realize it was made of trillions of black needles that created its shape—the vicious needles poking out as if, at the first sign, ready to tear any material into something less than minced meat.
Ignoring it, the young man walked beside it, his hand reaching out to a doorknob posed beside the being.
SPLURT!
The moment he took his eyes off the odd being and reached for the door, his severed hand fell to the ground, blood gushing out from his radial and ulnar arteries along with the palmar arches.
Yet, he did not react—not even a flinch—as if he had been inflicted by worse before. His seven transparent hearts did not fail him. His red, hemoglobin-rich blood began pouring, yet his gaze returned to the entity responsible for this.
The white lotus tattoo on his back glowed faintly before returning to its previous state.
The ink needles shifted, forming into a humanoid shape that now faced him directly.
The moment his gaze left it, the 'thing' would move.
Maintaining eye contact, he slowly turned the doorknob, and it opened—a flashing light momentarily blinding him.
Yet, as the atmosphere calmed down, his eyes found himself in a supermarket from the 2000s—yet it was infinite.
[Behold an Unthinkable Present]
Without warning, the lights in the infinite supermarket began to flicker, dimming from afar before they darkened completely, drawing closer and closer until the entire market was swallowed by darkness.
Glub. Glub. Glub.
[Behold an Unthinkable Present.]
The young man clutched his throat, drowning as his hands reached out in a desperate plea toward the shifting scene before him. He fell, plunging into the pool rooms—spaces filled with 3D white cement figures posed like ancient Roman gods. White light seeped through the cracks in the room, but his cries went unanswered.
[Behold an Unthinkable Present.]
[Behold an Unthinkable Present.]
[Behold an Unthinkable Present.]
The young man found himself in countless places, an infinite void filled with slides appearing in the sky as if drawn from nowhere. He ran frantically up an endless staircase, intertwining with countless others. He fled through a never-ending red corridor, pursued by monstrous entities. He collapsed onto the shore of a black sea, where violent rain fell upon sunbathing chairs, and a desolate island loomed in the distance.
[Behold an Unthinkable Present.]
He ventured into HEAVEN, a mockery of heaven itself.
He wandered into GRAVE, a grave for every death that was not truly a grave.
He felt it—the values of Void++, Rainy, Tree, ℵ₋₁, ω-1, Γ0, @ẞÞ, etched into his soul.
But most important of all, he witnessed Epistemic Humility, the Final Trial.
Countless versions of the man passed before him, each replaying the suffering he had endured: his pain, his thoughts, his very essence.
Yet, despite it all, his expression remained unchanged. He blinked, stoic, unshaken. The torment he had endured had eradicated the concept of "fear." No, the term "concept" itself had been obliterated from his mind. This was why he could not react—he had forgotten every concept in existence.
His innumerable deaths, so vast that even numbers and infinity could not measure them, had become his default state. Death and life, once distinct, now merged into one.
"Stop here."
Behold—
—a thinkable present.
The chaotic scenes ceased, revealing a verdant hill overlooking a beautiful sandy beach. The ocean shimmered, and small, colorful houses stood at a distance as the young man scanned the unfamiliar landscape, lost in thought.
"Destination your is this," a voice boomed from the sky, speaking backward. As it did, hundreds of glitching eyes appeared, staring at him with an intensity that could have shattered him.
"You worked. Not ready to see. Ready, ready, ready, ready, ready, ready."
The voice became a cacophony of static, yet there was a strange clarity in its words.
"Not... ready?" The young man croaked, barely able to form a sentence. For the first time in eons, he spoke. He had transcended insanity—something incomprehensible to even the oldest gods or the most eldritch beings.
"noissiM tsrif ruoy" (Read in reverse)
"Find Pandora, your first sister. The Scripture of Desire, Earth of Anguish. You are not."
"Great one, ordered it reached. Wheel of Veil, a fool's errand, be the world."
"The fool you are not. The hanged you mimic not. Justice you violate, the world, you are—"
"The eNd."
The broken phrases began to make sense. Yet a strange burning sensation rippled through one of his seven transparent hearts, as if it recognized something. His eyes widened, and a flood of memories surged within him.
But what he felt wasn't emotion—it was logic. The logic of these memories was too flawed, too distorted. He did not feel, for he could not understand emotion. He was not empty, nor emotionless. He was... True Nothing.
His pitch lack eyes began to fade, lightening to a lighter shade of black as it dissolved into a second smaller pupil beneath the original, like meiosis splitting into two.
[Antilogic (True) activated.] A cold, gender-neutral voice echoed in his mind.
[Violation of Logic detected!]
[Interverse anomaly detected. Scanning...]
[Loading... 10%... 20%... 50%... 70%... 100%]
[Processing. Please wait...]
[Scan failed. Rescanning initiated. [Y] / [N]]
[Y Selected]
[Warning!! System failure detected!]
[Interference detected. Verence of &*#^%. System shutting down. Reboot...]
[Setting up...]
[Mechanism of eight detected... Mechanism --> Reality.]
[Entanglement travel initiating to Arzora. Violation of Logic code detected. Error: 0X09033333KJ4... Memory resynchronization...]
[Target: OIU-PO0]
[Authority: Pale Weaver of Possibility.]
[System set to [Off Permanently].]
BADUMP.
The young man lost consciousness.
He awoke, his head cradled in his hands as foreign memories whispered in his mind. Yet, he ignored them, brushing them aside like dust on ancient stone. The agony that once tethered him to this liminal realm had transformed into something strangely affectionate. He no longer cared where he was—or who he had been.
Lifting his gaze, he surveyed his surroundings with detached curiosity.
The chamber stretched into endless darkness, the air thick with an oppressive gloom. Monolithic black pillars rose like tombstones, their shadows split by blood-red light spilling through tall, rectangular windows. This crimson glow, cast by the moon outside, bathed the throne in silent judgment.
At the far end of the hall, a man—or something more than a man—sat upon a throne. Obsidian hair cascaded past his shoulders, and twin horns curled from his skull like a crown of ancient sins. His eyes, deep and red as a dying star, stared unblinking at the young man. A magnificent black cloak rippled around him, as though alive, veiling him in regal menace.
Flanking him were six others—creatures of immense presence and pride, each radiant in their own strange majesty, yet unmistakably inferior to the one they served.
One among them stepped forward—pale, sharp-featured, with neatly combed hair, round glasses, and trembling black wings. His voice was calm, yet there was a subtle tremor beneath it.
"My liege... the summoning has succeeded. But... this is a human. The tomes foretold the arrival of an ancient entity. Was there an issue with the summoning? If the families of the Seven Deadly Sins learn of this deviation... there will be outrage. Their ancestors sealed their knowledge into those texts. What do you think of this, your majesty?"
The horned figure remained silent, his chin resting on his fist, his gaze never leaving the young man. The man, in turn, had already closed his eyes, unreadable—perhaps bored, perhaps amused.
His cold eyes scanned the young man, who sat in silent detachment.
Just as the silence thickened—
The doors creaked open.
"Daddy! I told you to stop making this place so—!"
A girl, no older than six, burst into the room. Her small feet echoed across the stone. Her hair, long and black as coal, matched the man's, and her eyes glowed with the same infernal red. But when she saw the human, her voice faltered, mid-sentence.
She froze.
"A... human?"
The air went still. Even the proud generals shifted uncomfortably, casting furtive glances, the tension palpable. For they knew that the girl, cold to most people, harbored an intense hatred for humans.
Humans had murdered her mother in cold blood.
Her small face twisted—not in confusion, but in memory. In hatred.
"You're the one," she hissed.
"You took her from me... I WILL KILL YOU!"
Her shriek shattered the air, a sound like glass breaking. She lunged at him, claws extended, her small, sharp nails gleaming like blades, moving with unnatural speed.
Shnnnk!
"Don't—"
Blood spilled.